


This Prayer Is For Me Tonight

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-12
Updated: 2011-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-17 23:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Faces turn towards him, sharp and unfamiliar, he looks away with a jerk, settles his chin on the knot of his too long, too blue, too wide tie and blinks furiously.</i> Pre-series Alex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Prayer Is For Me Tonight

His footsteps are deliberate, calculated, paced carefully and with a measure of restrained control. A hand settles, feather light and concrete heavy, at the small of his back, presses his too big, too stiff, too white shirt to the sweat beading along his spine. He shakes it off with a sudden shudder, more aggressive than he intends. Faces turn towards him, sharp and unfamiliar, he looks away with a jerk, settles his chin on the knot of his too long, too blue, too wide tie and blinks furiously.

Ms. Jones, or James, or whatever the fuck... ( _"call me Darlene, dear..."_ ) from child services has her twisted fingers clenched in the sleeve of his suit jacket. She hasn't left his side since this whole freak show started up three hours earlier and no amount of defiant movement is enough to budge her. He knows because he's tried.

"Alexander, dear?"

There's an undercurrent rippling apprehensively through her tone. A pleading and an apology and an implied _'I'll keep my eye on them for you'_ all rolled into five watery syllables.

He doesn't trust himself to look at her and they don't trust him to touch her. He can't open his mouth to correct her use of his full name and he can bearly _breathe_ around the golf ball sized lump of unbridled terror lodged in the back of his throat.

Instead he concentrates on keeping one too loose, too black, too shiny shoe moving in front of the other and pretends that he doesn't hear her. She sighs and her fingers twist into his sleeve a little tighter.

He doesn't shudder this time.

He doesn't know where his mom is, doesn't give a flying _fuck_ where his father is, hopes the kids are safe at school and tries desperately to remember if he turned the oven off when they left. It had been fucking freezing that morning. He'd used the oven to warm his brother's mittens before the school bus arrived. His grandmother, wrinkled and squat, huddled under a blanket in the only armchair, had raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

He doesn't know where she is now, either.

It's not until they get to the courthouse exit, a fierce blast of frigid air biting at his nose, that the full weight of what's about to happen hits him.

"Check the oven."

He mutters the words, breathless and panicked.

"Alexander?"

They've stopped moving. His feet are no longer following one another across the cracked asphalt and dirty patches of trampled snow. He turns to the voice, cuffed hands fumbling at the rope of foreign material around his throat.

"Don't call me that."

His child services worker, a friendly face amid the sea of unfamiliarity swarming around and past and through him, settles a hand on his shoulder. It's grounding, heavy, he could curl up under it and sleep for days.

"Please check the oven."

She nods, chin wobbling, jelly-like and loose.

"And don't let them cut her hair... she... just... she'll pitch a fucking- sorry, I mean, she'll cry and..."

"Alex, honey, stop worrying. It's not your job for the time being, okay?"

He thinks she's probably waiting for him to agree but worrying about his brother and sister has been his job for as long as he can remember and if he's not gonna be around to do it then, who the fuck is?

His stomach churns violently at the thought. He feels his eyes go wide, voices fade, colours blend into one another. He's being pushed to the ground, arms around him, too many arms, and all the air that he'd been breathing vaporises in an instant, leaving him doubled over and gagging.

 _“Get a medic-”  
“Get water-”  
“Get off him-”_

He recognises the last voice. Struggles to hold onto it, feels tears and snot and saliva drip from his chin. He manages to get a sleeve high enough to wipe his face, horrified and indignant.

A set of hands reach under his armpits and haul him skywards. The sudden change in altitude is head spinning, his eyes clamp closed and the nausea threatens a return.

The crowd of colours parts and warm hands settle on either side of his face. He's not used to being touched like that. The physical contact is equilibrium shifting and foreign.

“Alex, honey, you want some water?”

He shakes his head, the weight of her hands is unbalancing and restictive and as much as he wants them gone, they're also the softest things he's ever felt.

“I just-”

He falters because he doesn't know the end to that sentence.

 _”I just need to know that they'll be okay...”_

 _“I just need to get the fuck out of here...”_

 _“I just need this over and done with so I can go back to looking after them by myself...”_

He doesn't know. In the past he always knew. He can't for the life of him figure out what could possibly be different now. He's acknowledged that sneaking out to get his little brother back in the middle of the night probably wasn't the smartest way to go about things, but he's also learned that if you need something done, it's best just to do it yourself.

He relies on no-one but himself because it's less disappointing that way.

A vehicle pulls up, slides to a somewhat ungraceful stop on a patch of black ice. _Central Iowa Juvenile Detention Centre_. He lists things in his head to stave off the panic, _'potatoes, new shoes, asthma meds, school books, field trips that he doesn't have the money to fund, the leak in his sister's bedroom that he's never quite managed to completely mend, cat food, milk, dentist appointments, mowing the lawn, an incomplete history assignment that's due tomorrow...'_

He lets hands that he can't see push him into the backseat and wrap a seatbelt around him, like he's incapable of doing it himself. The cuffs are removed, they're not expecting him to attempt a high speed leap from the moving vehicle. They obviously don't know him very well.

Just before the door closes, Ms. Jones ( _Darlene_ ), pokes her head through the gap. She looks tired and old. Even more tired and old than she had this morning.

“I'll look after them, Alex,” she insists, voice deep and sure. “You don't need to worry about them for a while, okay? I promise I'll look after them...”

He doesn't know if it's proper for social workers to promise such things. He knows that as far as her priority list goes, he's not very high up on it. There's a wedding band on her ring finger and an earlier cell phone conversation that ended with _”I love you, too, baby...”_ to attest to that. But he drinks the words in anyway, sucks them down and clutches at them desperately, like straws or fraying blankets or his kid sister's fingers, and feels something that tastes a little like relief roll across his tongue.

His guard is down, it's dangerous and unfamiliar but, right now, he's too exhausted to care.

And it's okay, because somebody else is going to care for him.

Just 'til he can breathe again. Just 'til his shoes fit his feet and his white shirt greys a little at the cuffs.

Just 'til then.

The End


End file.
